At a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, a senior U.S. official said the United States has “called on the Arab world to repudiate the odious line that Zionism is racism.”

The hearing was devoted to a discussion of a sense-of-the-Senate resolution introduced Jan. 31 by Sen. Rudy Boschwitz (R-Minn.), which calls on the U.N. General Assembly to repeal the resolution. A similar version had been introduced in the House on Jan. 23 by Rep. Bill Green (R-N.Y.).

The official, John Bolton, assistant secretary of state for international organizations, noted that in recent years, the United States and Israel felt that “the time was not opportune to seek reversal.”

Bolton did not provide any timetable for requesting a vote for repeal except to say that “now is the time to reassess the situation.”

He said that the United States is consulting with the 35 countries that joined it in opposing the resolution in 1975. In addition, it is consulting with governments that voted for the resolution “but which have subsequently acquired new governments and new thinking,” Bolton added.

Burton Joseph, an honorary chairman of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, testified that “the European Parliament and the parliaments of Holland, Australia, Peru, Uruguay and Guatemala have formally criticized the resolution.”